Chapter Nineteen

Sabine was fascinated by the occupiers. She and Suzie had no direct contact with them, confined by the Germans’ rules to the tower, the farmyard and Micheline’s cottage, but there were opportunities to observe them nonetheless. Madame Ariane’s field glasses had lain unused for months after her failure to interest them in bird-watching. Now Sabine picked them up every day and trained them on the Germans’ camp. She liked to watch the soldiers in the late afternoon when, hot and thirsty from their day’s patrol, they would stand around the pipe which flowed into the drinking trough standing in their underwear to throw water over one another. Or, they would go, a group of ten of them, to bathe, naked, in the lake, jumping into the water with shouts of pleasure. For long minutes Sabine would prop her elbows on the windowsill to support the weight of the binoculars, and stare, without moving and without commentary. Suzie would lean beside her. To her unaided vision, they were indistinct, forked, tasselled creatures, running and shouting, splintering the water into iridescent shards of spray.

One evening when Sabine lost interest in the spectacle, Suzie picked up the abandoned glasses and refocused them on the field. The young men were just leaving the drinking trough. The head and shoulders of two of them jumped forward under the magnification. She saw the collar of brick-red skin on their necks between their cropped hair and the silky whiteness of their shoulders. She found it hard to believe that these boys, playful and unarmed, speaking her parents’ language, wished her ill. It seemed so strange to hate someone for being what she was, Jewish. It was like Sabine’s hatred of Madame Ariane, without a reason, just for being what she was, a stepmother.

She swung the glasses from the departing boys to the cobbles in the yard to pick out one of Micheline’s decorative hens. The head and shoulders of Madame Ariane swam out of the haze. She was frowning. Her hair was tied back which emphasised her large nose and dark eyebrows; normally pale, her face was coloured with sun and exertion. She was in motion and disappeared at once, to be replaced in Suzie’s view by the major, bareheaded.

Suzie abruptly lifted the binoculars away from her eyes to understand what she had seen. The figures shrank back into their context: Madame Ariane, carrying her saddle and bridle, was walking rapidly towards the barn, followed by the major. Suzie quickly replaced the glasses before her eyes. She could see that the major’s expression was purposeful. It was harder to decide whether Madame Ariane knew he was behind her, was leading him or fleeing from him.

Stealthily, Suzie laid the binoculars down, saying nothing. There was nothing wrong in the two of them being in the farmyard at the same time. Yet she did not want Sabine to see Madame Ariane and the major together, whatever chance, or purpose, had brought them there.